Juraj Flamik

* 1957

  • “There were so few signals, that even what was happening abroad did not suggest that it would definitely succeed and it would break here. I think it really was a revolution since it suddenly affected the people in Czechoslovakia and they were not prepared. The situation of Czech dissent was of course different, but when we speak specifically about Slovakia, here everything was rooted in human and moral attitudes, and friendship.”

  • “In 1988 people who had a unified competence-moral attitude, were joining VPN. I think it was a good heritage, and, intuitively, also the young representatives of For a decent Slovakia are not seeking other competence, but this one. They are not rooted in youth fractions of opposition political parties. As if after 30 years, the new generation in Slovakia came from the same positions, from individual responsibility, some moral stance, and from the need of cooperation, and invited others to join us. I see a parallel in this.”

  • “We certainly did not belong to any “hard fraction”, and did not distance ourselves from the regime as dissent. As Milan Šimečka recalls, ecologists accepted the regime, did not attempt to change it, did not challenge it. But there was a strict line, that we never crossed. I think the difference is in fact, that he as a dissident had to perceive the line very strictly from the other side. But we perceived it as much more diffused, because we transgressed it and no one has stopped us. We could have done a lot of things.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Bratislava, 25.01.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:41:51
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Competence of leaders of “November 1989” was mostly their moral attitude

Juraj Flamík was born on October 26, 1957 in Senica. After a year the family moved to Bratislava. He studied at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, SVŠT. He started to work at the Zapadoslovenské energetické závody, later he worked at Mestská správa pamiatkovej starostlivosti a ochrany prírody. He worked in nature protection, in June 1986 he participated in the preparation of a documentary “Bratislava Aloud”. He worked in the National Heritage Institute in Prague, at the end of November 1989 he returned to Bratislava and became a member of VPN, later chairman of the VPN Coordination Committee. He lives in Brno and works for the environmental foundation “Partnership”.